"Interesting and helpful information. If at all you are free any time, would like to understand more on AWS side."
- Contractor who is charging the company I work for $$ per hour
Programmatic access to ephemeral ~hardware resources that has been available to the public since 2004, with documentation well written and hedged by the company and community, hmm, yes, lemme spend some of my free time regurgitating enough of it to be dangerous.
There is a part in all of us, our inner blowhard, that takes pride in receiving adoration or praise for presenting knowledge whether it is our own or as in this case quite some many others' worthy product. We see this in tech company's efforts to re-publish the web on corporate wikis (write the novel bits instead). We see this in hallway "soapbox" sessions. There is no denying the satisfaction that comes from people listening (and earnestly) to you.
But free?! Which free is intended here? Afaic the exchange of 3rd person knowledge is neither free as in beer nor free as in speech. Re-representing a non-novel concept in a manner that lifts those from the inability to seek and acquire information for themselves is quite costly.
But there is a place for such a thing and it lies in the distinction between a similar juxtaposition. The exchange of knowledge should not be "Worthy as in Snickers", but "Worthy as in ladybugs".
Snickers satisfies. If you don't like chocolate, peanuts, nougat, mouth watering caramel, and the care that goes into making this product, substitute Snickers with a product that is made with quality ingredients and is the labor of a skilled team of artisans, but available to the masses, substitute hand-crafted ale.
Ladybugs are beneficial. If you are squeamish about "bugs", and who in software isn't (I minored in Entomology, so not I :D ), so can't appreciate the self-propagating, aphid-eating, beauties which are the "gateway insect" for so many children who grow to have a healthy relationship with their natural world, okay, substitute yeast.
In the exchange of pure information, no working product involved, worthy as in ladybugs should apparently stand out as the winner of meeting the "free" price tag. So when should I give freely my ladybugs? Afaic when they are going to a good garden, one that may be overrun in one corner with aphids, but not to one which has a gardener that allowed the whole garden to be overrun nor one who refuses to devote time, experiment, read the literature, well one who is clearly not a gardener, and surely to one who is worthy, one who will be ladybugging another gardener :)
